


your love i'm lost in

by arthur_pendragon



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Amnesiac Merlin (Merlin), Clubbing, Immortal Merlin (Merlin), M/M, Merlin Waiting for Arthur Pendragon's Return (Merlin), Modern Era, Pining Merlin (Merlin)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 04:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21293474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthur_pendragon/pseuds/arthur_pendragon
Summary: It’s been so long since Merlin was real.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 121





	your love i'm lost in

**Author's Note:**

> [recommended background listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCcGuJzewCo)

Every nightclub he’s ever been to has been loud enough to deafen him. This one, too. Music that isn’t to his taste blares from concealed speakers on the walls and ceiling. The clashing, colliding sound waves are sometimes perceptible in the glitter clouds that float in the air above the writhing masses. He is always looking upwards, towards the lights that could blind him. He hates being here. He aches to dissolve into the waters of a lake he doesn’t know any road to.

It’s been so long since Merlin was real.

He still goes; it’s in these clubs that he turns to dust and bone, in between the coalescences of blood, flesh, sweat, the lips and hands and the knowing, sultry, beckoning eyes. The back-of-hand UV stamps and the laughter and the flashes of neon teeth. The propositions, proffered pills, pouting lipstick kisses unasked for, someone else’s mascara imprinting spiderwebs on his cheeks. He’s just another presence. Another soul in a cage that’s suffered too much and not enough, nothing consequential to the strangers living momentary lives around him.

He writhes, too, strains towards the senseless lyrics. Raises his hands when the rest of them do, shouts and screams the choruses.

Sometimes it’s a love song that slows them all down.

Sometimes his disintegrating mind drags up the memory of a — man, god, king, and his golden eyes make him just a bit tangible. The man, god, king is painfully handsome. Blue eyes silver in the strobes. Gold hair white. As tall as him, but stronger, but better, but so much better. They dance, pushed up against each other, and they can’t look away from each other, even in the darkness.

Merlin leans in to kiss the smiling man.

The bleeding god closes his eyes.

The dead king collapses into stars in Merlin’s hands.

Merlin lets the stardust float away with stinging regret. He wonders why it’s always this god that his magic — it’s magic, probably, or he’s mad and seeing things; maybe he’s mad after all — conjures when he’s lonelier, less alive than usual. Wonders who this beloved man must’ve been to him. Was he there when Merlin was real and himself? Had the glorious king loved him? Had someone loved him all those years ago when the world was still new?

Soon Merlin kisses someone flesh-and-come-and-blood, accepts the crushed capsule on the other person’s tongue, and stops wondering anything at all.

He’s not there, not really. He’s nowhere. He’s lost. He’s mad. He goes anywhere he likes and tries to fade away. That’s the way it’ll have to be.

It’s been so long since Merlin mattered.

He’ll find a place he can’t hear his thoughts, and he’ll dream of the beautiful god that his heart swells and dies for, then he’ll breathe through the day, then he’ll do it again until, maybe, one day, he’ll remember the man’s name.


End file.
